Waspi women should be compensated for state pension age change failures

[IwantToRetire]

I heard a discussion about this on the BBC which was more detailed than this article, and implied that the problem wasn't so much how it was announced in the 1990s, but the later changes during the time Coalition was in power.

But suspect whoever is in Government there will be a delay in any payout.

https://www.professionalpensions.com/news/4188325/waspi-women-compensated-pension-age-change-failures

Somebody did try to suggest it wasn't fair on younger people to expect them to foot the bill (as if it hasn't always been the current tax payers who foot the bill at the time).

Which would be the same as saying the local government's who have gone bankrupt once it was shown they had discriminated against women employees and owed them money, shouldn't have to do it.

So not only are women too often cheated at the time, but are later told they shouldn't expect compensation because not fair on current tax payers.

(For some reason cant access the WASPI web site, but suspect it might just be overloaded. But when back on line may be worth checking their take on the situation. http://www.waspi.co.uk )

Good point!

I agree I knew about it and so did my mum who was effected, it was well publicised

I'm prepared for this to not go down well, but I have always thought of the WASPI campaign as being a very twee, middle-class movement. Many of the women involved have seemed to me to be adjacent to members of the WI.

Many retired on their workplace pensions schemes in their 50s - there was one campaigner on the TV being interviewed who retired at 47!

I used to think it was a case of these women embarrassed at being shown to be unprepared and maybe a little feckless, for want of a better word. Their identity is bundled up with being "very financially astute" and "super organised", only to have this revealed to not be the case.

But I now think its deeper than that. Those who claim to be unaware of the changes were so because they were never going to be reliant on their state pension. The working class women tend to have been the ones aware because their state pension would be paying a large proportion of their costs after retirement.

I also think these women aren't used to being on the blunt end of modern politics so fully assumed that the changes they were hearing about couldn't possibly happen to them.

Those saying that the website gave them the wrong age.. although this is clearly wrong, what year was this happening? The internet in the 00s and even early 10s was nothing like it is today. Information in a corner of an old .gov website should always have been taken with a pinch of salt.

Love the weaponisation of “twee” “middle class” and “WI adjacent”.

Substitute “rough” “working class” and “Bingo hall adjacent” and see how it reads.

A fascinating thing about Mumsnet is the different strands of prejudice that reveal themselves. This thread offers the opportunity to identify most of them.

@Oheighthundreddoubleohtensixtysix think you’re bang on. If you have the luxury of not keeping an eye on your money, it’s likely because you don’t need it. Why should young people pay even more towards this selfish, asset-rich generation?

I think it's obvious from some of the testimonies that working class women working difficult jobs were some of the affected. The problem for me is that many of these women complain that by 60 they are knackered and not fit to work, and are really complaining about having to work till 65. But there are hard jobs across the sexes where people are knackered by 60. It's not a women thing and it's no reason for women to moan about the pension age increasing.

Yes, I never understand why some women use the reasoning that they physically 'cannot' work longer than 60, as though it's a female-specific factor.

Nobody is suggesting that a great many women don't work (and have worked) in very tough and often physically demanding working environments (whether in actual employment, caring roles or other); but how do they magically expect all of the working-class men in 'traditional male' dangerous and back-breaking jobs to have always been just fine routinely working until 65, when it's a ridiculous possibility that they ever could have?

No one in authority really seems to care about the young workers now. You know , the ones who can’t afford to buy a house so are stuck paying ridiculously high rents.

When are young people going to be able to have a retirement age ?

Were so focused on older people sometimes, that I think that young people are forgotten.

They ( me) are keeping this country going. How do people think they are receiving pensions? If the working tax payers.

Were expecting young people to work til they drop.

The problem is old people tend to go out and vote in general elections and younger people are less likely. Parties are more likely to please the oldies with their policies because of this.

The solution is for younger people to take the trouble to vote.

I remember a cartoon of two dogs sat on a beach with vague speech bubbles referring loosely to the State Pension - that was the governments idea of relaying info to us. What an insult!

Two dogs having a jokey chit-chat about pensions - clearly we are categorized as dogs by the patriarchy......

But if Messrs Cameron and Osborne had tried to mess around with men's pensions then they would have been lynched upside-down on the nearest lamppost, exactly like Mussolini.

Two dogs having a jokey chit-chat about pensions - clearly we are categorized as dogs by the patriarchy......

Yeah, that comment was made at the time.

My mum was one of those affected but like I said up thread we knew well in advance so I, not sure why the complaining women didn’t. She actually did a physically demanding job and ending up doing her back in in her 50s so took ‘early retirement’ and was able to claim some sort of disability benefit until she got her state pension, if these people were so unfit to work not sure why they couldn’t have done the same

But men’s pensions were already due at 65 so it was just equalling it up, it’s not a specific attack on women because they are women. When the age went from 65 to 67 that was applied equally to men and women

Yes that would be great.

I posted before - in 2011 i was 57 - the change meant I waited until I was 66 for mine - so that's 9 years. Men affected went from 65 to 67 presumably so two years.

But women had been getting their pension at 60 for years before that so had actually had an advantage of being able to retire earlier than a man of the same age, it’s not a personal attack on women because they are women to make it the same men. If they’d increased the women’s retirement age to 67 but left men’s at 65 (could have used the arguement that women have longer life expectancy than men) that would be more a personal attack on women for being women but making things the same isn’t

The main arguement seems to be that these women didn’t know about it and had they know they could have done more planning with their private pension to retire earlier than state pension age. However the fact they didn’t know about the changes that had been announced 15 or 20 years earlier shows they weren’t doing any pension planning anyway, other than just expecting to draw state pension at 60. My mum was effected and it’s unfortunate as of of course given the choice anyone would prefer to retire at 60 rather than 67 but it was financially unsustainable, when the state pension ages were set after the war life expectancy was much lower so the length of time a state pension was paid for was much shorter. There was also talk at the time about it being unfair on men and if their pension age should be 60 too which would have made it even more expensive, The change wasn’t a cliff edge either so if you were born one day your retirement age was 60 and born the next day it was 67 it was graduated, my mums retirement age was something like 64 and 7 months as she was born in 1950s

I was one of the women that knew something . But getting information from the DWP at the time was confusing and misleading, if not sometimes actually wrong.eg you will/ will not get the new full pension. In the and I was pathetically glad to receive any small pittance as I had no idea what it would be. It was practically impossible to get a straight answer. At one point I was told I didn’t need to top up, when it turned out the reverse was true. It was an absolute dogs dinner of misleading information.

Of course our generation care about future generations. The poison directed on here towards us is unjustified . We are the generation that made huge changes in women’s lives and are still fighting for them, despite your best efforts to remove those we all have.

I hadn’t realised it was higher before the war but was just looking and also saw it used to be age 70 when introduced in the early 1900s.

not sure if this is correct but the reasoning for it being lower for women is that in a typical married couple the man was a few years older than the woman. Women tended to work until they married and then gave up and were supported on the man’s income. There were two rates of pension, single pension and married couple pension. The women’s pension age being lower meant that in a typical couple a man would be able to claim the married couple pension when he retired age 65, otherwise a man would have not been able to afford to retire at 65 if his wife was not working and wife was a few years younger. This was set up for the typical couple of the time and none of this applies now so it is logical that pension ages should now be same.